E-Newsletter of SACAR (Sri Aurobindo Centre for Advanced Research). August 2010. Volume 3, Issue 5
Brief Report of Ananda Reddy’s Visit to the USA and Europe
Ananda Reddy recently returned from a three-week-long trip to several cities in the USA and Europe. During this time he attended the Sri Aurobindo Integral Yoga Retreat organized at Furmon University in Greenville, South Carolina (July 14-18). Ananda delivered many talks there covering different topics related to the journey of Integral Sadhana. He covered areas such as Basic Requisites of Sadhana, Sadhana through Work, Meditation, and Love & Devotion, and Difficulties of the Path. At the question & answer sessions titled “About the Mother”, organized in the late evenings he was accompanied by Sraddhalu Ranade, who also delivered several lectures and talks at the retreat on important topics related to Integral Yoga.
Ananda Reddy’s talks and lectures touched many people because they incorporated many reminiscences from his personal contact with the Mother. Other speakers included Narad (Richard Eggenberger) who led the OM Choir and also spoke on the spiritual significance of the flowers, and Dilip Sarkar who led the Ashtanga yoga and pranayama sessions in the morning and also spoke on yoga therapy and Ayurveda. Ananda Reddy also travelled to St. Louis and spoke at different gatherings. There again, his talks focused more on the Bhakti aspect of Integral Yoga and incorporated many of his personal recollections of living in the Ashram.
In most of the meetings and gatherings Ananda attended in the US, he discovered that there was a great curiosity among the participants to know about the details of the life in the Ashram when the Mother was there physically, and also about the Mother’s daily routine during that time. At one event, he witnessed a beautiful play on the virtues, performed by a group of children. He was touched by a poem written and composed by a 6-year-old girl, in which she expressed her love and affection for her “Pondy Mother”. Ananda’s talks at the Sri Aurobindo Yoga Foundation at New Jersey focused on the nature of psychic being, and Godward emotion & God. Throughout his travels, Ananda was very pleased to see a large number of young people attending and taking active role in the programmes being organized to spread the work and vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
Ananda also visited Holland and Berlin during this trip. At Holland, he spoke to a group of people on the role of meditation and mantra in Integral Yoga. At the gatherings he attended in Europe he was again touched to see the seeking that was present among the younger audiences, who were so keen to hear about the Mother and her work and vision.
MĀSA is a bimonthly electronic newsletter published by SACAR and provides updates and information about various activities at SACAR. We invoke the blessings and grace of our beloved Mother and Sri Aurobindo through our reference to MĀ and SA. Contact: Beloo Mehra beloome@gmail.com sacar@auromail.net Phone: 0413-2348067
A supreme difficulty is Nature’s indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved; it is not a warning of an inextricable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong for us from whom we must flee. Sri Aurobindo
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